Chung Yu Jung

More than just the founder and former chairman of Hyundai, the late Chung Yu Jung was also an advocate of the move towards a market economy. Specifically, he felt that decisions ought to be made by private corporate leaders, and not by politicians and bureaucrats.

His advocacy came in light of the phenomenal growth of chaebols - or large conglomerates - in the country. Though these chaebols had contributed massively to South Korea's economic development, there were little genuine respect or affection for these conglomerates. Indeed, public criticism of chaebols were becoming increasingly vocal and severe. Even Chung himself once admitted that the general public tended to think of the country's big businessmen as "criminals."

In 1991, Chung defied the government's anti-chaebol campaign by forming a new political party, the Unification National Party, a move described by Stephen Haggard and Chung-in Moon as "unthinkable under the previous regime." The hastily formed party emerged as the second major opposition party by winning 17 per cent of the votes and 10 per cent of the seats in the National Assembly in the March 1992 general election.

"Chung's party undercut the constituent's base of the ruling party, demonstrating that big business could wield significant political leverage in a democratic context," Haggard and Chung noted in their article The State, Politics, and Economic Development in Postwar South Korea (Hagen Koo ed. State and Society in Contemporary Korea, Cornell University, 1993).